


Legacy

by coaldustcanary



Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Minor Violence, POV Esca Mac Cunoval
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:53:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coaldustcanary/pseuds/coaldustcanary
Summary: There is nothing Esca understands so little as Marcus Flavius Aquila and histraditions.So he thinks.
Relationships: Marcus Flavius Aquila/Esca Mac Cunoval
Comments: 8
Kudos: 48
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Legacy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foxxcub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxxcub/gifts).



Esca had miscalculated, and badly.

As Marcus mouthed a line of strangely soft, panting kisses down his throat, Esca considered that, if pressed, he might admit (at least in the privacy of his own thoughts) that he had imagined _something_ like this happening before the night was through. He had expected Marcus to be nearly silent, and here he was, breathless and wordless, looking up at him with those soft cow eyes, conforming to Esca’s expectations there, at least. Marcus barely had the decency to emit a muffled grunt when Esca cupped the back of his neck, digging his fingertips into the taut muscle of Marcus’s shoulder and pinning him firmly to the ground. Something in Marcus’s hard expression wavered as his shoulder blades hit the dirt. It rippled visibly over his features like a groundswell, and his hands came up to frame Esca’s face with surprising delicacy as he returned the hard, searching kiss Esca pressed on him with eager, if clumsy, fervor.

Esca had sought out Marcus Flavius Aquila for a fight. Knowing something of himself, despite his own personal weaknesses, and guessing shrewdly at what went on behind the other man’s stolid, tight-lipped expressions, he’d chanced that any brawl between them had gambler’s odds of turning from fighting to fucking. He was only human, after all. He’d given it thought, and judged that if it went that way, it would be silent, violent, and potentially extremely satisfying, if brief. But this?

As Marcus eased his tongue into Esca’s mouth, groaning softly and trying to coax him into gentling the kiss, he got a sharp bite to his lip for his troubles. Marcus managed only a wounded look in response and a breathless gasp through lips that gleamed wetly under the diffuse glow of spotlights angling through the misty trees. Esca sat back abruptly on Marcus’s solid thighs and shifted his glare from the absolute _idiot_ pinned between his knees to the gilded statue of the _stupid fucking bird_ looming overhead, bathed in the lights of the campus grotto. The mantling eagle had been doused in a heavy splash of red paint cast across its mantling wings that dripped luridly to the ground.

It was at this point that Esca realized that he was deeply and thoroughly fucked.

* * *

It was sometimes difficult for Esca to suss out what precisely he actually enjoyed about the collegiate experience, in contrast to the myriad elements of stereotypical college life from which he actively recoiled every time he was given the opportunity. He thoroughly enjoyed some of his classes, to be sure; he wasn’t a nerd or anything, but he groused about having to actually attend school far less often than most other students he knew. He wasn’t into sports, but he didn’t hate that athletics was a thing, exactly, either. He drank and smoked - he wasn’t above getting wasted from time to time. And he certainly fucked - he wasn’t a prude. What it took him his first full year at university to realize was that it was the excess that so many of his fellow students engaged in that drove him nearly mad with frustration.

Given their freedom, many of the students he knew would cut class and complain endlessly about school. They would throw themselves fully into luridly-colored, screaming, drunken rallies at football games, the Golden Eagle mascot blazoned in paint across their naked chests. They would drink until they vomited and fuck whoever was nearby. They would do these things not because they truly enjoyed them or wanted to find out what they did enjoy, but because they believed wholeheartedly that it was what was expected of them. Something, or someone, urged them on to constantly-greater idiocies, whether it was wistful parents reliving bygone glory days through their children’s exploits, or stupid television, or upperclassmen determined that every Calleva U student experience the same extreme gauntlet of experiences they had navigated previously.

It was a theory, anyway, he thought. He was still working on the details, but he thought it might make the beginnings of a decent persuasive essay. Professor Stephanos only lifted a single eyebrow, and shook his head.

“It needs work. There’s no _there_ , there. Don’t look at me like that, now, did I say you were wrong? No. I could really do without any additional details of your sex life in the final draft, but regardless, I think you’re probably right in terms of the influential factors involved with predicting student behavior. It’s complicated. But what are your conclusions?”

Esca frowned, idly scrolling on his tablet as he scanned the concluding paragraph of his essay, trying to find an answer to the professor’s probing. Wasn’t it obvious? It was all a performance, nonsensical and meaningless. But the professor talked right through his speculation, leaning back in his chair and steepling his fingers thoughtfully as if warming to his subject.

“The question you have to ask and answer,” the professor continued. “Is this: _so what?_ It’s not enough to point at and identify the particular behavior and then speculate as to the cause. Even if you’re correct, you have to tell me why I should give a damn.”

* * *

Though his essay draft didn’t spell it out in so many words, Esca’s dorm roommate Marcus was the larger-than-life illustration of everything he’d learned to critique in Introduction to Sociology and the inspiration for his final paper. He was a walking stereotype, a living model of young adult excess and the spitting image of a catalog-perfect college student.

CW drama good looks? Check.

Upper-middle class wealth and privilege? Check.

A closet full of red and gold collegiate gear? Check.

Golden ticket _legacy_ admission status? Check.

The only thing that even began to fray the edges of Marcus’s image were the murky, even mysterious deaths of his parents; Esca wasn’t so much of an asshole even on his worst day to pry into that, especially given the limited, strained relationship they enjoyed. However, in Esca’s view even that only served to give Marcus a Very Special Episode-ready tragic backstory for the CW drama that was his life, these days.

As a second-year student Esca should have been bunked with a friend or at the very least someone he knew; instead he’d been stuck with this golden god of a transfer student with whom he shared nothing in common. They shared a single room and limited space in mostly-strained silence. After only a week, during which Marcus managed to charm half the athletics department, making friends who regularly crammed into every open inch of their dorm room and pointedly ignored him, Esca had grimly determined that this year of school would be, of necessity, devoted to science. It was nothing short of embedded ethnographic research in his daily life, up close and personal, in which he would figure out exactly how guys like Marcus managed to move through their lives with such ease and success.

(The explanation, he figured his professor would say, was privilege, but Esca wasn’t so sure. His roommate’s wealthy uncle and late-model car might give him a leg up on most others when it came to certain social norms as well as more beer and pizza money than most, but he was hardly a big spender compared to many students on campus. And Marcus had little social capital of his own—even his legacy admission status, courtesy of his father, came with the baggage of rumor-mill fodder, something about a rivalry prank involving Northern State’s mascot turning ugly and criminal, years ago.

“What did he do?” Esca had asked Marcus finally, the corner of his mouth turned up with sharp mirth. “Piss inside the mascot’s fuzzy head or something?” The thin line of Marcus’s mouth had turned down with displeasure, and as something ping-ponged between glee at the landed strike and a sudden sense of uneasiness in Esca’s chest, the other man had stalked out of the dorm without a further word.)

* * *

Though he was no star athlete himself (“Used to play. Got hurt, you know how it is,” Marcus had said vaguely to his new comrades, enough self-deprecation in his words to make him seem humble, but enough experience coloring his thoughtful commentary on last Saturday’s game to impress half the offensive line) Marcus carved out his social circle most prominently, but not exclusively, among them, Esca noted. He performed the rituals just as well as they did - the pep rallies, the school color uniforms, the early drinking and the late drinking and the carousing in between. Every time he’d go out to a house party or a tailgate, Esca would wait and watch for him to look happy or excited, but he never did. Frankly, Marcus often looked tired, not just when he’d drag himself home after a night out, but before he even left the room, shrugging on a red and gold sweatshirt with a preoccupied frown.

“Do you even want to go?” Esca asked one Friday night, glancing sidelong from his phone screen toward Marcus, who paused at the doorway.

“Why wouldn’t I? You should try getting out sometime,” Marcus replied, his frown deepening for a brief moment before he slipped out the door and closed it behind him with a resounding thud.

When Marcus returned just before dawn, blearily humming snatches of the school fight song, Esca woke up with a scowl and told him to shut the fuck up.

After a moment of awkward silence, during which Marcus sat down on the twin bed across the room heavily, Esca rolled over in his own bed, turning his back toward the room and pulling the blanket back over his head.

“There’s a sports drink in the fridge. You should drink it if you don’t want to be sick,” he muttered, too tired to interrogate the strange flash of smug pleasure as he heard the hum of the mini fridge being opened and the rhythmic sound of Marcus gratefully chugging the beverage.

* * *

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Esca muttered incredulously.

“It’s a tradition,” Marcus replied, brows drawn down sharply.

“You’re going to guard a concrete bird all night in the rain for “tradition”, okay, sure,” Esca said, drawing finger quotes lazily around the word as he sprawled in his desk chair. “What the fuck does that even mean? And don’t launch into some story about your father executing some failed ninja raid on another school’s mascot and the likelihood of some _other_ idiot from Northern pulling the same shit in some age-old retaliation scheme. Why does it even matter if they paint a dick on the base of the statue or whatever other dumbshit nonsense you’re afraid of?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Marcus replied tightly, his disapproving glare barely glancing over Esca as he shook his head.

“Yeah? Try me?”

“You’d have to care about something, first,” Marcus retorted, fixing Esca with a cool, weighing sort of look before leaving him to blink in surprised silence with only a few dry parting words.

“Let me know if you manage it.”

* * *

“I’m starting to care, Marcus. I care about putting a boot in your ass, and you’ll be wanting to care about it, too, shortly,” Esca muttered to himself, tramping across campus in the wee hours of the night, hunched inside his jacket. He dodged the few other students out and about at this hour, who were either stumbling home drunk from a party or exhausted from the library, by and large.

The Eagle’s Nest was a half-stone grotto flanked by the river that bisected the school grounds, far on the northern edge of campus. Once raucous parties of students had “stood vigil” over the weathered statue there, painted each year anew in metallic gold, to protect it from the depredations of rival fans the night before the big game. The tradition and habit had fallen by the wayside over the years, however, in favor of house parties and pep rallies in the ritzy student union building.

Except for Marcus, of course. One lone idiot standing in a damp, cold clearing on a December night before the last football game of the season. All for the sake of tradition.

And he had the unmitigated _gall_ to call out Esca, as if he was the one being foolish by eschewing this stupid, useless ritual that nobody else gave a shit about, either. Esca scowled and shouldered through the overgrown shrubbery down a narrow dirt path to get to the shrine. The rushing of the river turned louder here, where it surged through rocks rather than meandered through the wide banks that bound it on campus proper.

He found Marcus hunched at the base of the statue, his back propped up against the stone plinth the eagle perched on, his hands tucked under his arms for warmth. He should have easily seen Esca approach, and as Esca paced across the clearing he expected to be greeted with an expletive or a punch, depending on Marcus’s mood, but there was only silence. It wasn’t until he was only a few steps away from the statue that Esca realized that Marcus had fallen asleep. The burst of indignant anger that had fueled him to stalk across campus diffused in a rush.

“Hey. C’mon.” He nudged Marcus’s foot with his own, startling the other man awake with a gasp. “It is way too damn cold for this, man. Get up.” Marcus hissed and grimaced, moving stiffly, as if he wasn’t in full control of his limbs. Esca frowned, and offered his hand. Marcus ignored it.

“Take it,” Esca said, bending over when even in the limited light he saw Marcus’s face go white when he shifted his weight, attempting to push himself up on the statue. He wrapped a hand around Marcus’s arm and pulled steadily, dragging him to his feet. He saw pain play over the other man’s features, his eyes momentarily glittering, and looked away, narrowing his eyes at one of the lights with a frown before looking back, giving Marcus a moment to compose himself.

“You OK?”

“Fine,” Marcus grunted.

“You going to fall on your face if you take a step away from this monstrosity?” Esca asked after a moment, nodding his head at the statue at Marcus’s back.

“No.” His voice was firm, but nobody present, even the cement bird, was persuaded by the response.

“You are way too big for me to carry.” The flash of a smile that briefly appeared on Marcus’s face prompted an answering one on his own, but both were gone too quickly.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Marcus said stoutly. Esca sighed and pulled on his arm.

“What do you sporty types always say? Walk it off? Yeah. Walk it off. Or you’ll stiffen up and be found out here like a fucking ice pop. I refuse to be responsible for that,” Esca found himself grumbling, dragging Marcus into a stumbling, slow walk, keeping a hand on his arm for balance. The glare Marcus turned on him was grim, but Esca was undeterred.

“You know I’m right. You can stand still and let it build up to agony, or you can stretch while it stings.” They walked stiffly, Marcus listing only a little, in tandem around the clearing, pausing just on the edge of the surrounding wood. Marcus let go of Esca’s arm and gripped a tree branch with a frown.

“What are you doing here, Esca?” Esca grimaced and shrugged.

“Thought I’d come see if you were getting hazed by some Northern State shits.”

“Yeah?”

“It might have been funny.” Something shuttered in Marcus’s face, his gaze shifting down to the ground, and Esca sighed.

“I’m fucking with you. It’s fine. I was mad, because you were being a prick, before.” Marcus jerked his chin down in a nod, opening his mouth to speak before Esca hurriedly cut him off.

“It’s fine,” he repeated. “I guess a walk did us both good. But I still think this is dumb and we should get back to the dorm. It’s fucking freezing, you know.”

It was Esca’s own brand of shitty luck that at that very moment, a group of six laughing guys wearing Northern State gear appeared from the trailhead across the clearing. Each of them swung cans of paint from their hands. Esca swore under his breath and froze.

Marcus, on the other hand, staggered away from the tree line, making wavering tracks directly back toward the statue, his face set in a grim line.

“Fuck,” Esca breathed out, closing his eyes momentarily before trotting after Marcus with a grim expression.

* * *

Esca had come looking for a fight, and Marcus had expected one, but the Northern State fuckheads had _not_ expected to find anything in the clearing but a chipped and faded statue, Esca noted grimly, swiping at his mouth with the back of his hand as he glared up at the stupid stone edifice. Only one had managed to sling paint in a spraying arc across the statue before Marcus had charged into their midst like an angry bull. Esca had followed, hefting a tree branch picked up from the edge of the clearing, and though they were outnumbered, discretion had formed the better part of their opponents’ valor after limited exchange of mostly badly-aimed punches. Confronted with any kind of resistance, they retreated, flinging a few curses in their wake. Esca was left with a cracked stick and a stinging cut at the corner of his swelling mouth, but otherwise not too much the worse for the wear.

Marcus, on the other hand, had taken several blows before Esca had waded in with his stick, and where before he’d been wobbly on his bad leg, now he wavered on his feet simply standing. Esca helped him to sit, and Marcus smiled crookedly from his position once again at the base of the statue, one of his eyes gone ruddy and starting to swell.

“Stand up, sit down, make up your mind.”

“You can say thank you, you know,” Esca replied tartly, crouching down next to him.

“Thank you, Esca,” Marcus said with unforced sincerity. He clasped Esca’s arm and squeezed, giving him a searching look before closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the statue’s base. Esca's breath caught in his throat for a moment before he could reply.

“You’re welcome. You’re still an idiot, though,” he finally managed. Marcus cracked open his one good eye.

“Probably. Failed at what I was supposed to be doing, after all,” he muttered.

“We didn’t. We won,” Esca objected. Marcus shook his head slightly, then aborted the motion and winced, gesturing up above his head at the statue.

“It’s just paint. It can be repainted,” Esca said, shaking his head.

“I know.”

“Look, I will help you paint it. You can tell me all about the deep symbolism of the school colors or whatever. How the proper red is different than the red they used. You'd think they would have picked a different color,” Esca said with a put-upon sigh. It prompted another flash of a smile from Marcus, and something loosened in Esca’s chest.

“It doesn’t mean anything. Never did,” Marcus replied. “Except…I’m glad you were here.” Marcus's hand found his arm once more, and settled there, heavy and warm through his jacket sleeve.

“Me too," Esca admitted.

"That meant something. To me," Marcus clarified.

"No shit?" Esca asked faintly, resting his hand on Marcus's shoulder. When Marcus pulled him into his lap to search out his mouth with surprisingly gentle intensity, the bird towering above them forgotten, Esca fell into him, all pretense of _performance_ gone in an instant.


End file.
